We
Can Protect Ourselves from ‘Open-Carry’
By
Leave it to a
philosophy professor to come up with the simplest and most practical way to
deal with the threat posed by ‘open-carry’ laws.
Jack Russell Weinstein, professor of philosophy and director of
the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life at the University of North Dakota
has come up with a plan: Leave.
Stop what you are doing, get up and walk out. Do not finish your
meal and do not pay. Do not put groceries back on the shelves, do not pass go
and do not collect $200. Simply bid the establishment a good morrow and walk
your still intact self out in one piece.
The idea is if enough people do this, establishments that are so
keen to put their patrons lives at risk by tolerating attention-starved gun
enthusiasts, will lose money. Perhaps a dent to their bottom line will
encourage them to put a stop to the madness if nothing else will.
“It is rational to be afraid of someone with a weapon, especially
if you know nothing about them,” Weinstein says.
What would you do if the building you were in caught fire? Or if
you smelled smoke and suspected it was going to catch fire? You would leave.
You wouldn’t stop to pay, because fear for your life overrides any issues
involving money.
Just because society’s obsession with firearms has gotten so out
of control does not mean we have to adjust our own rationality to conform to
it.